Biblical Hebrew Forum

[JimStinehart AT aol.com]

Karl W. Randolph:
 
I have typed up drafts of detailed responses to your prior messages.  But I 
did not post them, because in looking them over, there was virtually no 
discussion of Hebrew words or Hebrew language issues, which are the focus of 
the b-hebrew list.
 
But I will respond to your latest message.  However, I, along with virtually 
everyone else on the b-hebrew list, want to be discussing Biblical Hebrew 
language issues, and not get hung up on questioning people’s beliefs.
 
1.  You wrote:  “Where are you coming from? What is your belief concerning 
Biblical
 authorship?”
 
My controversial view is that the Patriarchal narratives were composed by the 
first Hebrew, in the mid-14th century BCE.  There is only one author of the 
Patriarchal narratives.  The text was later “copy-edited”, modernizing 
the Hebrew grammar.  But the substantive content was left virtually 
untouched, so the stories that one sees in the received text are the same, 
unedited stories that were reported in the mid-14th century BCE, using 
virtually the exact original wording.  (There are only a tiny handful of 
editorial additions to the original text, in my view.)
 
The rest of the Bible, by contrast, was composed by multiple authors, many 
centuries after the composition of the Patriarchal narratives.
 
I have no particular expertise beyond the Patriarchal narratives.  I see no 
J, E, P or D authorship of the Patriarchal narratives.  To what extent JEPD 
may have composed several other early books in the Bible is beyond my range 
of interest and competence.
 
If you are asking about Moses, all I have to say is that the early Hebrew 
author of the Patriarchal narratives long pre-dates any historical Moses.  
The Patriarchal narratives are much older than Moses.  I see the Patriarchal 
narratives as having been written down, to a certain extent, from the very 
beginning.  At first, it was just names of people, but then names of places, 
and then common words generally, were also added to the written account.  The 
oral tradition of the Patriarchal narratives was always supplemented by 
written notes, and later by written text.  There was a concerted effort by 
the Hebrews never to change the substantive content of the Patriarchal 
narratives, and it never changed.
 
2.  You wrote:  “On this list we have minimalists who believe that the text 
is largely
 post-Exile and mostly legendary, going up to maximalists who accept that it
 mostly reflects accurate history, then there are those like myself, other
 Biblical Christians and Orthodox Jews who claim the theological belief that
 it is accurate history, rejecting the Documentary Hypothesis. Where do you
 fit in?”
 
I am a Biblical Maximalist as to the Patriarchal narratives, which is the one 
part of the Bible on which I post.  As to the rest of the Bible, you would 
probably characterize me as being a Biblical Minimalist.  In fact, I have no 
particular expertise regarding the rest of the Bible.  My “agenda” is to 
show that the Patriarchal narratives were composed in the mid-14th century 
BCE, by a single author, the first Hebrew, whose work was never edited 
substantively, and who lived in northern Canaan, at least north of Jerusalem. 
 The first Hebrews had to contend with a strange Egyptian pharaoh, whom the 
first Hebrews worried might not defend Canaan (and the first Hebrews) from a 
feared military onslaught by the dreaded Hittites from the north.  In my 
controversial view, this rational, albeit short-lived, early Hebrew fear of a 
possible invasion of Canaan by the mighty Hittites, under Hittite King 
Suppililiuma I, is one key to understanding the underlying mindset of the 
Patriarchal narratives.  In the Amarna Age of the mid-14th century BCE, 
Canaan was not a safe place!  
 
I utterly reject the Documentary Hypothesis as it relates to the Patriarchal 
narratives, which is the only part of the Bible that I post on.  I have no 
particular view as to whether or not the Documentary Hypothesis may or may 
not apply to other books in the Bible.
 
3.  You wrote:  “From recent discussions it seems to me that you have a new 
theory that I haven't seen before, namely that after the Israelite invasion, 
east of the
 Jordan under Moses, west of the Jordan under Joshua, during the middle
 bronze age, that the invaders then realized that the civilized inhabitants
 had a "history" telling where they came from, therefore the invaders also
 made up one drawing parts of their stories from the cities around them?”
 
That is not my theory at all.  The Hebrews are indigenous to Canaan.  The 
Hebrews did  n-o-t  come from the east.  The Patriarchal narratives open with 
Terakh’s family being on a one-time caravan trip way out east to Ur to buy 
lapis lazuli.  But you know that the Hebrew word “am” is never used 
regarding Abraham’s relatives at Ur or Harran.  No, the word consistently 
used is “molodet”, meaning “one’s father’s descendants”.  The 
reason why the text of the Patriarchal narratives never asserts that 
Terakh’s “am”/ancestors lived in Mesopotamia is because they didn’t.
 
I do not see the storyline of the Patriarchal narratives as being “made 
up”.  On the contrary, all of my posts always stress that the Patriarchal 
narratives very closely follow the well-documented secular history of the 
mid-14th century BCE.
 
4.  You wrote:  “That you are quite a high maximalist, saying that this 
authorship occurred early, during the late bronze age? That the evidence for 
the dating of these
 legends is the archeology from late bronze age Israel?”
 
I do  n-o-t  see the Patriarchal narratives as being “legends”.  On the 
contrary, the Patriarchal narratives were composed in the mid-14th century 
BCE, and very closely reflect what actually happened regarding the first 
Hebrews in the mid-14th century BCE.  The early Hebrew author uses artistic 
license, however, to make everything fit into a smooth storyline.  For 
example, in secular history it was actually the men of Jenin, not Jacob’s 
#2 and #3 sons, who killed the leader of Shechem and the men who were with 
him in a sneak attack that was surprisingly successful.  But that is not a 
“legend”.  No, it is very closely based on what historically did actually 
happen in the mid-14th century BCE.  Events like the historical Decapitation 
of the Shechem Offensive in the mid-14th century BCE were of profound concern 
to the first Hebrews, who could have been effectively eliminated as a 
separate people by the aggressive leaders of Shechem (per chapter 34 of 
Genesis).
 
As another example (on which I’ll do a post later), one key to 
understanding the Sodom sequence in the Patriarchal narratives is to do a 
linguistic analysis of the name “Sodom”.  That’s the type of issue 
where there’s considerable expertise on the b-hebrew list.
 
As to “the archeology from late bronze age Israel”, that is very 
important.  But instead of focusing on buildings, I am more interested in 
inscriptions.  What I have been working on for the last year is documenting 
that all 15 cities and regions where the Patriarchs are portrayed as 
sojourning in the text are historical names of historical cities and regions 
in Late Bronze Age Canaan, north of Jerusalem.  The key is to examine the 
inscriptions from the mid-15th century BCE (shortly before the first Hebrews 
appeared) and the mid-14th century BCE (the Patriarchal Age), and then 
compare these ancient non-Hebrew west Semitic inscriptions to the Biblical 
Hebrew of the last 40 chapters of the received text of Genesis.  I am 
particularly excited about Late Bronze Age inscriptions that I see as 
evidencing the name “Arbe” or “R-B city”, for Kiriath Arbe, and the 
word aleph-bet-resh as the basis for the Hebrew name “Hebron”.  Given the 
great deal of expertise in Biblical Hebrew by you and many others on the 
b-hebrew list, I see this as the ideal forum for setting forth these 
controversial ideas of mine, which argue for a composition date of the 
Patriarchal narratives about 700 years earlier than scholars currently see as 
being the case.  The key is to understand how the early Hebrew author of the 
Patriarchal narratives uses Hebrew words and puns, which should be the long 
suit of the b-hebrew list.
 
5.  You wrote:  “If you have developed such a theory, please explain. We 
could then integrate your claims into a coherent whole. Right now, you are 
coming across as a
 nutcase with excessive verbiage.”
 
I do not post on the Exodus, the Conquest, Moses, or on much of anything 
except the Patriarchal narratives.  Many people may think I am a 
“nutcase” for seeing the Patriarchal narratives as having been composed 
by a single early Hebrew author in the mid-14th century BCE, with such 
composition never being substantively edited thereafter.  But I relate each 
and every story in the text to what actually happened in the mid-14th century 
BCE.  In particular, as just noted I am currently working on matching all 15 
cities and regions where the Patriarchs are portrayed as sojourning to 
well-known Late Bronze Age inscriptions in Canaan north of Jerusalem.  One of 
the main reasons why scholars have overlooked these well-known inscriptions 
to date is because scholars uncritically accept the 2,500-year-old 
traditional view that the Patriarchs are portrayed in the text as usually 
sojourning south of Jerusalem when they are in Canaan.  That simply is not 
the case.  That is not what the text says.
 
The only way to establish the historicity of the Patriarchal narratives, in 
my opinion, is to get the basic geographical facts right in the first place.  
After leaving Beth-el, Abraham went west of Beth-el, to “the well-watered 
meadowland place”, which he called “Hebron” (the Patriarchal version of 
the aleph-bet-resh from a mid-15th century BCE inscription), located 17½ 
miles west of Beth-el.  The valley there (Genesis 37: 14 refers to Hebron as 
being a “valley”) was  i-d-e-a-l  pastureland in Canaan.  That 
interpretation of the text is sensible, instead of the traditional view, 
which is entirely illogical, that Abraham chose to take a huge flock of sheep 
and goats and 318 armed retainers “up” into the “hill” country at the 
city of Hebron, 20 miles south of Jerusalem, a locale where there is precious 
little good pastureland.
 
What may prove the validity of my new theory of the case is that there is no 
“Arbe” attested south of Jerusalem in the ancient world, and no name 
“Hebron” attested south of Jerusalem prior to the 8th century BCE.  But I 
have found inscriptions from the mid-15th and mid-14th centuries BCE which I 
think are non-Hebrew versions of “Arbe” and “Hebron”.  It’s a 
question of analyzing these Hebrew names, and non-Hebrew possible equivalents 
of these Hebrew names from the Late Bronze Age.  That’s what I’m 
interested in, and that’s what I post on.  Rather than talking about 
general theories, I want to discuss how individual Hebrew words in the text 
of the Patriarchal narratives may or may not match up with non-Hebrew west 
Semitic inscriptions from the Late Bronze Age.  If we can get the historical 
geography of the Patriarchal narratives right, and understand the brilliant 
use of Biblical Hebrew punning in the Patriarchal narratives, then we can 
determine the historical time period of the composition of the Patriarchal 
narratives and of the Patriarchal Age, both of which I myself see as being 
the mid-14th century BCE. 
 
Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois

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